I've been doing a lot of research on political polarization. I think the story can be described by two simple statistics:
1. 68% of Americans say that insulting political opponents is "never fair game."[1]
2. "The Facebook audience of congressional candidates engaged with oppositional posts more than with ones that didn’t take sides"[2]
I think this is just the fundamental struggle of being human - what's fun now vs. what's good in the long term. Political takedowns, cable news, tweetstorms - these are all fun. But they are in no way nuanced, and they in no way lead to good democracy.
At the same time, I don't think political polarization is an existential threat to democracy. We're allowed to be polarized because we don't have any huge issues to face. If you look at George W. Bush's approval ratings after 9/11, they skyrocket, because we had a lot more important things to worry about all of the sudden.
I think polarization is a huge problem that may eventually damage the country seriously (you could argue that it's doing that already). I have been to the US since 2000 and it seems a lot of people are more interested in their party winning than in things being run well. So instead of solving problems people in Congress are busy campaigning all the time. Or trying to impeach whatever president has been elected starting right after the election. Things like health care are impossible to address. The US wants small government but it actually has a pretty big government that's very badly run and inefficient. Since the 80s all this could be compensated by running up bigger and bigger deficits but that will be over at some point.
I think the country desperately needs to add some element of proportional representation to the election system so people don't have choice between just two viable options but more. I believe things would change a lot if the big parties couldn't always vote straight party line but would have to make compromises with other opinions.
We're allowed to be polarized because we don't have any huge issues to face.
We most certainly do have huge issues, but they don't (yet) affect a hugr amount of people all at once. The 9/11 terrorist attacks unified America because they scared everyone, therefore everyone was affected, therefore everyone came together on it.
What about the various drinking water pollution crises that have been happening across the Midwest? The massive increase in life-ruining opioid and amphetamine addictions? Healthcare costs becoming unaffordable for low-income Americans? Teachers working two jobs to put food on the table? Out of control student debt? The list goes on.
No one of these things affects the whole country at a time. If you aren't affected, you don't care.
the so-called 9/11 attack is a crock of undesirable material. who did it, I don't know, but it has been pegged on some club frequenting drug addicts. no doubt, this attack is an inflammatory incident, but the baloney-riffic spin that has been put on it (which has stuck for some people) is absolutely depressing.
I couldn't disagree more: there are many huge issues at stake. Abortion, to cite one which animates both left and right, and which is at stake in the fight cited at the top of the article over the current Supreme Court nomination.
We adopt a certain indirection on HN so that we can avoid descending into political harangues, but outside of this context, people need to fight and fight hard for what they believe.
It's semantics for sure, but I think huge issue != controversial issue. Healthcare or global warming (depending on which side you ask) may be the biggest existential threats to America itself. But even with those, I don't see polarization being too much of a road block for us to figure some solution out.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 28.7 ms ] thread1. 68% of Americans say that insulting political opponents is "never fair game."[1]
2. "The Facebook audience of congressional candidates engaged with oppositional posts more than with ones that didn’t take sides"[2]
I think this is just the fundamental struggle of being human - what's fun now vs. what's good in the long term. Political takedowns, cable news, tweetstorms - these are all fun. But they are in no way nuanced, and they in no way lead to good democracy.
At the same time, I don't think political polarization is an existential threat to democracy. We're allowed to be polarized because we don't have any huge issues to face. If you look at George W. Bush's approval ratings after 9/11, they skyrocket, because we had a lot more important things to worry about all of the sudden.
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/01/few-american... [2] http://www.people-press.org/2018/07/18/how-the-facebook-audi...
I think the country desperately needs to add some element of proportional representation to the election system so people don't have choice between just two viable options but more. I believe things would change a lot if the big parties couldn't always vote straight party line but would have to make compromises with other opinions.
We most certainly do have huge issues, but they don't (yet) affect a hugr amount of people all at once. The 9/11 terrorist attacks unified America because they scared everyone, therefore everyone was affected, therefore everyone came together on it.
What about the various drinking water pollution crises that have been happening across the Midwest? The massive increase in life-ruining opioid and amphetamine addictions? Healthcare costs becoming unaffordable for low-income Americans? Teachers working two jobs to put food on the table? Out of control student debt? The list goes on.
No one of these things affects the whole country at a time. If you aren't affected, you don't care.
I couldn't disagree more: there are many huge issues at stake. Abortion, to cite one which animates both left and right, and which is at stake in the fight cited at the top of the article over the current Supreme Court nomination.
We adopt a certain indirection on HN so that we can avoid descending into political harangues, but outside of this context, people need to fight and fight hard for what they believe.